Insight and Inclusion:
Expanding Visions of American Art
20 th Annual American Art Conference
A student in 1834 opens William Dunlap’s
groundbreaking treatise on American art and
reads of John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West,
and John Trumbull, encountering as well figures
such as Dean Berkeley, Nathaniel Smibert, and
Anne Leslie. In 1867, Henry Theodore Tuckerman's
Book of the Artists… is published. That era's
student would again read of Copley, West, and
Trumbull, but also of Hiram Powers, Daniel
Huntington, John Gadsby Chapman, and John
Eliot. This pattern, in which a corps of canonized
masters is complemented by a varying company
of other artists, is repeated in texts on American
Michele Gordigiani, Mrs. Cornelia Ward Hall
art through the 19th and 20th centuries. EP
and Her Children, ca. 1885, oil on canvas, 53½
x 68 in. Museum of the City of New York,
Richardson and Lloyd Goodrich, for example,
bequest of Mrs. Martha Hall Barrett, 61.155.1.
celebrate Copley, West and Trumbull and, to
differing degrees, masters such as Winslow
Homer, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and John Marin. Overlooked by Richardson and Goodrich will be
some of the earlier artists, as well as periods in the oeuvres of now-marginalized figures. And
those who are diminished—consider, for example, Richardson's view of the American
Impressionists—or overlooked might well have their day in the work of subsequent historians,
as would be the case of the American Impressionists in the writings of Wayne Craven.
In this 20th-anniversary conference, we challenge the notion of a static canon and look
instead at the canon as a more fluid entity, one that includes not only those who have always
been seen as pillars of American art, but those once included but then perhaps excluded as
time passes and tastes change. A canon, whatever it might be, whatever we might consider it,
is not simply a snapshot in time (although it is a snapshot), but the product of a shifting
series of perspectives which are affected by artists, critics, curators, scholars, gallerists, and
collectors, among others. Over the course of our exploration, we will broaden our approach to
the canonical, considering the work of some who were excluded and revisiting the work of
others who were treated unfairly or inconsistently by time, regardless of region, era, or the
movement of which their work can be seen to be part.
Leadership funding has been provided by The Richard and Jane Manoogian
Foundation and The Louis and Lena Minkoff Foundation.
Partner Level funding has been provided by Jonathan Boos.
We gratefully acknowledge funding from The American Art Fair, The Anschutz Foundation, Collisart, LLC,
Conner • Rosenkrantz, Debra Force Fine Art, Inc., Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Gerald Peters Gallery, Hollis
Taggart Galleries, James Reinish & Associates, Inc., George Jeffords, Menconi + Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC,
Questroyal Fine Art, Jason Schoen, and anonymous donors, as well as support received from Bonhams,
Christie’s, Shannon’s, and Sotheby’s (as of 4/1/2015).
This conference is dedicated to Harry L. Koenigsberg (1922 – 2002).
Friday, May 15, 2015
Formal sessions take place at The Graduate Center,
City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue
(between 34th and 35th Streets).
8:45 – 9:15 a.m. Registration and
continental breakfast
9:15 – 9:30 a.m.
Introduction. Lisa Koenigsberg.
9:30 – 10:10 a.m. The Forgotten Origins of
American Art. Kimberly Orcutt.
10:15 – 10:45 a.m. Rembrandt Peale and the
Problem with Yorktowne.
Paul Staiti.
10:50 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Exhuming American Art: A
Panel Discussion. Alfred C.
Harrison, Jr., Kimberly Orcutt,
Suzanne Smeaton, Andrew
Thompson; James W. Tottis,
moderator.
12:05 – 12:45 p.m.
Rembrandt Peale, Washington before Yorktown, 1824; reworked 1825,
1830, oil on canvas 137½ x 120½ in. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, gift of
the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia, 44.1.
Indian Combat: An Important New Discovery in Edmonia Lewis’s Oeuvre.
Mark Cole.
12:45 – 2:00 p.m.
Lunch (on your own)
2:00 – 2:40 p.m. Hudson River Exotic: The Art and
Travels of Henry Augustus Ferguson. 2:45 – 3:25 p.m. Jonathan Spies.
Thomas Hill, Painter of Yosemite
and Beyond. Alfred C. Harrison, Jr.
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
3:45 – 4:25 p.m.
Dressed to Impress: Decoding the Fashionables of Gilded Age Portraiture. Phyllis Magidson.
4:30 – 5:15 p.m.
Francis Davis Millet: Shining the
Spotlight on a Renaissance Man.
Gina M. D'Angelo.
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Reception and viewing
Edmonia Lewis, Indian Combat, 1868, marble, 30 x 19 x
14⅜ in. The Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting
and Sculpture Sundry Purchase Fund and purchase from
the J.H. Wade Fund 2011.110.
Gerald Peters Gallery
24 East 78th Street
(between Madison and Fifth Avenues)
Remarks by Gavin Spanierman.
Charles H. Davis, The Old Pasture, 1919, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 in.
Bruce Museum, purchase from the artist, 1919, 00029.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Formal sessions take place at The Graduate Center, City
University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th
and 35th Streets).
9:00 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
9:30 – 10:15 a.m.
Beyond the Clouds: Revisiting the
Tonalist and Impressionist
Landscapes of Charles H. Davis.
Valerie Ann Leeds.
10:20 – 11:05 a.m.
Emil Carlsen, The Fan, oil on canvas, 15¼ x 18¼ in. St.
Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase, 14:1919.
From Pantry to Parlor: The Still-Life Paintings of Emil Carlsen.
Susan G. Larkin.
11:05 – 11:20 a.m. Break
11:20 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest:
A Tale of Two Painters. Roberta A. Mayer.
12:15 – 1:00 p.m.
Unearthing Alson Skinner Clark and Jonas Lie:
The Panama Canal and Beyond. Jonathan Stuhlman.
1:00 – 2:15 p.m. Lunch (on your own)
2:15 – 2:55 p.m. Rethinking the Boundaries of Western American Art.
Thomas Brent Smith.
3:00 – 3:40 p.m. American Realism in the South, 1910 – 1940. Nancy Rivard Shaw.
3:40 – 4:00 p.m. Break
Louis Comfort Tiffany, A Family Row on the Hudson, ca. 1872. The New
Jersey State Museum.
4:00 – 4:40 p.m. A Parallel History: The Hard-edge School in America After 1945. William C. Agee.
4:45 – 5:25 p.m. Miller, Marsh, and Bishop Revisited. Rebecca Lawton.
6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Reception and private viewing of Bonhams’ American Art Preview
Bonhams
580 Madison Avenue
(between 56th and 57th Streets)
11:30 – 3:00 p.m. “Mimosa Morning”
Brunch and private viewing
Godel & Co.
Fine Art
506 East 74th Street (off York)
Sidney Dickinson, The Alabama Studio, 1918, oil on canvas, 84 x 52½ in. Greenville County
Museum of Art, Museum purchase from the Arthur and Holly McGill Fund, 2001.21.72.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Presenters
Lisa Koenigsberg, conference director; President,
Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC); she launched
the series of annual conferences on American art
in 1996. Most recently prior to founding IAC, she
was Director, Programs in the Arts and Adjunct
Professor of Arts, NYU/SCPS. She contributed a
chapter to The Art of Collecting: An Intimate Tour
Inside Private Art Collections with Advice on
Starting Your Own (2010), and she collaborated
with Suzanne Smeaton on an essay for the
catalog for Auspicious Vision: Edwin Wales Root
and American Modernism, an exhibition
celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Edwin
Root Bequest to the Munson–Williams Proctor
Art Institute. Other writings have appeared in
books and journals, among them The Gilded Edge:
The Art of the Frame (2000), Architecture: A Place
for Women (1990), The Architectural Historian in
America (1991), the Archives of American Art
Journal, the Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians, and the Proceedings of
the American Antiquarian Society.
William C. Agee, Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of
Art History, Hunter College, City University of
New York (CUNY); he is founding editor,
contributing editor, and coauthor of the essays in
Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné (3 volumes,
2007); formerly Director, The Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston and Pasadena Art Museum. Among
his publications are works on Synchromism,
Duchamp–Villon, painting and sculpture of the
1930s, Bruce, Daugherty, Schamberg, Crawford,
Diller, Davis, Dove, Francis, Judd, Marin, Noland,
Porter, and Arnold Friedman. He is working on a
book, Modern Art in America, 1908 – 1968: A
Critical and Thematic History. In Spring 2011, he
was a fellow at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Research Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Mark Cole, Curator of American Painting and
Sculpture, Cleveland Museum of Art; he
completed the reinstallation and reinterpretation
of these holdings as part of the museum’s
extensive renovation and expansion, while
simultaneously launching an extensive framing
initiative. His acquisitions include major works by
Aaron Douglas, Jared French, Jacob Lawrence,
Edmonia Lewis, Reginald Marsh, and Theodore
Roszak. He hosted such exhibitions as “Maine
Sublime: Frederic Church’s Twilight in the
Wilderness” and "Youth and Beauty: Art of the
American Twenties;" and this past fall organized
"Jacob Lawrence: The Toussaint L’Ouverture
Series." He has lectured and published on a
variety of topics, including Beaux Arts mural
painting, New Deal-era African–American artistic
production, and commodity sculpture of the
1980s, and he recently contributed the essay, “A
Life Cut Short,” to the George Bellows
retrospective organized by the National Gallery of
Art. Cole holds a PhD from the University of
Delaware where he specialized in the history of
American art, and an MA in art history and
Jonas Lie, Culebra Cut, 1913, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 in. Detroit Institute of Arts,
City of Detroit Purchase, 14.5..
museum studies from Case Western Reserve
University. He was the recipient of a Henry R.
Luce Foundation Fellowship in American Art, as
well as a Smithsonian Fellowship in American Art.
Gina M. D'Angelo, independent art historian
specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century
American art and the work of Francis Davis Millet;
she holds a PhD in Art History from The Graduate
Center, CUNY. Her interest in Millet began with her
doctoral dissertation, “Francis Davis Millet – The
Early Years of ‘A Cosmopolitan Yankee,’ 1846 –
1884.” Current projects include research on Millet’s
mural decorations on which she has lectured at
the Southeastern College Art Conference and at
the Hudson County Justice Brennan Court House.
Recently, she co-curated "The Boltons of Pelham
Priory" (2010) exhibition at the Bartow–Pell
Mansion Museum; contributed essays to American
Paintings to 1945. The Collections of the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art (2007); and served as
adjunct professor of art history at Marymount
Manhattan College. Previously, she was a research
assistant in American Paintings at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a member of
the Curatorial Committee of the Bartow–Pell
Mansion Museum and an advisor to the Pelham
Preservation Society.
Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., owner of North Point
Gallery; he started as a private collector of
19th-century American paintings whose hobby
turned into his profession when he assumed.
ownership of the gallery in 1985. In addition to
holding exhibitions of early California art,
Harrison has assembled a research archive
relevant to early California painters from
contemporary newspaper sources. He is a
frequent lecturer and writer on the subject.
Recent projects include essays in the exhibition
catalogue California Impressions published by the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2006, “The
Art of William Keith” in The Comprehensive Keith
(St. Mary’s College of California, 2011) and
"California Stories, Genre Paintings from the
Golden State" in the November–December 2013
issue of The Magazine Antiques. He has recently
finished his comprehensive history, California
Painting of the Nineteenth Century.
Susan G. Larkin, independent art historian; she is
the author of The Cos Cob Art Colony:
Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore
(National Academy of Design and Yale University
Press, 2001) and was the curator of the exhibition
of that title. She is the author of American
Impressionism: The Beauty of Work (Bruce
Museum, 2005) and Top Cats: The Life and Times
of the New York Public Library Lions (2006) and,
with H. Barbara Weinberg, co-author of American
Impressionists Abroad and at Home: Paintings
from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art (2001). She has contributed essays to the
New-York Historical Society’s exhibition catalogue
The Armory Show at 100 (2013), The Metropolitan
Museum’s catalogue Childe Hassam: American
Impressionist (2004), and the collections
catalogues of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the
Corcoran Museum of Art, the Williams College
Museum of Art, the Memorial Art Gallery at
University of Rochester, and the New Britain
Museum of Art. She received her PhD from The
Graduate Center, CUNY.
Rebecca Lawton, Curator of Paintings and
Sculpture, Amon Carter Museum of American Art,
Fort Worth, Texas. She earned a BA from Colorado
College and an MA in art history from Syracuse
University. She began her curatorial career in
1982 as the research assistant for the exhibition
and catalogue The Arts and Crafts Movement in
New York State, which won the Henry Allen Moe
Prize for scholarship. She worked as an assistant
curator at the Delaware Art Museum (1984
–1988) and as curator at the Frances Lehman
Loeb Art Center at Vassar College (1988 – 1999).
Since arriving at the Carter Museum in 2000, she
has organized several exhibitions including
"Striking Likeness: Portrait Prints from the
Permanent Collection," "American Masters of the
Woodcut," "Stamped with a National Character:
Nineteenth-Century American Color-Plate Books,"
"Edward Hopper in Four Acts," and "The Spirit of
291," among many others.
Valerie Ann Leeds, independent curator and
scholar specializing in the work of Robert Henri
and his circle; she is the guest curator for a
forthcoming museum retrospective of Charles H.
Davis to be held at the Bruce Museum,
Greenwich, Connecticut. Recent projects include:
“Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New
York Realist Eugene Speicher” organized with the
Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art of SUNY New
Paltz; “Spanish Sojourns: Robert Henri and the
Spirit of Spain,” a traveling exhibition
accompanied by a publication organized with
the Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah; and a
traveling exhibition and the first museum
exhibition devoted to the development of the
Santa Fe art colony. She also organized a
traveling retrospective and publication devoted
to the work of midwestern Precisionist, Edmund
Lewandowski, for the Flint Institute of Arts, and
an exhibition in collaboration with the Georgia
O’Keeffe Museum exploring Georgia O’Keeffe and
camping, “Georgia O’Keeffe and the Faraway:
Nature and Image” (2010). Past publications
include My People: The Portraits of Robert Henri
(1994), Robert Henri in Santa Fe: His Work and
Influence (1998), Robert Henri: The Painted Spirit
(2005), and studies on The Eight and their circle,
including an essay in the catalogue for the
Detroit Institute of Arts traveling exhibition,
“Life’s Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists’ Brush with
Leisure” (2007). Other publications include studies
on the work of Leon Kroll (1998), Ernest Lawson
(2000), William Glackens (2003), Charles H. Davis
(2007), Marguerite Zorach (2007), John Sloan
(2009). She received a PhD from The Graduate
Center, CUNY, and has held curatorial positions at
the Flint Institute of Arts, the Orlando Museum of
Art, the Tampa Museum of Art.
Phyllis Magidson, Curator of Costumes and
Textiles, Museum of the City of New York (MCNY);
she has devoted the last three decades to an
extraordinary collection of historical and
theatrical clothing. During her tenure she has
contributed to over 60 special exhibitions focused
on distinctive aspects of the City’s lively
historical, societal, and theatrical patrimony. Her
perspective on fashion as artifact supposes it as
the most revealingly personal category of
material culture. Recent gallery exhibitions include
"Gilded New York," "Stephen Burrows: When
Fashion Danced," "The World of D.D. and Leslie
Tillett," "Notorious & Notable: Famous American
Women of Style," "Valentina: American Couture
and the Cult of Celebrity," and "Paris New York:
Design, Fashion, Culture 1925 – 1940." "Worth/
Mainbocher: Demystifying the Haute Couture,"
currently featured on the MCNY Collections Portal,
is Magidson’s first Web exhibition.
Roberta A. Mayer, Professor of Art History and
Visual Arts Head, Bucks County Community
College in Newtown, Pennsylvania. The author of
Lockwood de Forest: Furnishing the Gilded Age
with a Passion for India (2008) and Stella Elkins
Tyler: A Legacy Born of Bronze (2004), she
received the prestigious Robert C. Smith Award
from the Decorative Arts Society in 2001, and the
Annual Award in the Category of Decorative Arts
Monograph for her book on Lockwood de Forest
from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian
Thomas Hill, California, 1879, oil on canvas, 42 x 70¼ in. Private collection.
Registration
Registration confirmations are sent via email.
To register on-line:
https://insightandinclusion.eventbrite.com
By e-mail: Fill in the registration form and send to:
[email protected].
By mail: Return form at least 10 days before the
conference start date with a check or money order
payable to Initiatives in Art and Culture or complete
the credit card information on the form, and mail to
Initiatives in Art and Culture, 333 East 57th Street,
Suite 13B, New York, NY 10022
By phone: Using American Express®, Visa® Card,
Discover®, or MasterCard®, call (646) 485-1952.
Fee: The conference fee is $350. Educators and museum
professionals $160 (with ID) / Student rate $100 (with
ID). To receive the discounted rate you must provide
proof of status.
Withdrawal and refunds: Notice of withdrawal must be
made in writing to: Initiatives in Art and Culture,
333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B, New York, NY 10022 or to
the Program Office via e-mail at [email protected].
No refunds will be made after May 4, 2015.
Marsden Hartley, New Mexico Recollection #6, 1922, oil on canvas, 25¼ x 36½
in. Denver Art Museum: William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, 2001.455.
Conference location: This conference will take place at City
University Graduate Center with events at Gerald Peters
Gallery, Bonhams, and Godel & Co. Fine Art.
Program subject to change.
Single-day registration options available; please send inquiries to:
[email protected] or call
(646) 485-1952.
Please register me for "Insight and Inclusion: Expanding Visions of American
Art." The conference fee is $350 / Educators and museum professionals $160
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Presenters
Director, Eli Wilner & Co., and through her work
Society in America (2009). Her articles have
at the gallery, curated over 16 exhibitions
appeared in Winterthur Portfolio, Studies in the
dedicated to American frames, consulted with
Decorative Arts, 19th Century, The Salem County
numerous private and public collections, and
Preservationist, and The Journal of Modern Craft.
framed artworks for many institutions including
She contributed chapters to Cincinnati ArtThe White House, The Metropolitan Museum of
Carved Furniture and Interiors (2003) and Tiffany
Art, The Yale University Art Gallery and the
Glass: A Passion for Colour (2009). Most recently,
Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a
she was honored by the Carnegie Foundation for
the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for frequent lecturer and author of numerous
articles, among them contributions to The Gilded
Advancement and Support of Education as 2010
Edge: The Art of the Frame (2000), The Magazine
U.S. Professor of the Year for Pennsylvania. She
ANTIQUES, and Picture Framing Magazine. She
received her PhD from the University of Delaware
contributed an essay on frames of the Ashcan
with a specialty in American art history and a
painters to Life’s Pleasures The Ashcan Artists'
minor in decorative arts.
Brush With Leisure 1895 – 1925 (2007),
Kimberly Orcutt, independent scholar; Orcutt has
collaborated with Lisa Koenigsberg on an essay on
organized exhibitions on a variety of topics,
frames in the catalogue for "Auspicious Vision:
including Colonial portraits, the sculptor John
Edwin Wales Root and American Modernism," for
Rogers, George Bellows, John Singleton Copley,
and the contentious relationship between William the Munson–Williams Proctor Arts Institute, and
Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. She was assistant recently wrote an essay about the re-creation of
the original frame on Emanuel Leutze's
curator of American Art at Harvard’s Fogg Art
“Washington Crossing the Delaware” for the
Museum and she served as Henry Luce
Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Foundation Curator of American Art at The NewYork Historical Society, where she co-curated the
Thomas Brent Smith, Curator of Western American
award-winning exhibition The Armory Show at 100:
Art and Director, Petrie Institute of Western
Modern Art and Revolution. Orcutt holds a PhD
American Art, the Denver Art Museum (DAM). He
from The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she wrote
previously served as curator of art of the
her dissertation on American art at the 1876
American West at the Tucson Museum of Art,
Centennial Exhibition. She has published and
where he organized the exhibition “A Place of
lectured extensively on 19- and early 20th-century
Refuge: Maynard Dixon’s Arizona” and authored
American art, and is a past chair of the Association
the companion publication. Since joining the
of Historians of American Art.
DAM in November 2008, Smith has overseen the
implementation of exhibitions and programs
Nancy Rivard Shaw, Curator Emerita of American
including "Masterworks of Charles M. Russell: A
Art, Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA); independent
Retrospective of Paintings and Sculpture" (2009),
scholar specializing in late 19th- and early
"Charles Deas and 1840s America” (2010), “Ed
20th-century American art. Among the major
Ruscha: On the Road" (2012), was curator of
exhibitions Shaw has contributed to are: “John
"Western Horizons: Selections from the
Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age” (1979),
Contemporary Realism Collection" (2011),
“The Quest for Unity: American Art Between
"Theodore Waddell’s Abstract Angus" (2012), and
World’s Fairs” (1983), and “American Art from
"Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of
the Manoogian Collection” (1989). She
Charles Partridge Adams" (2012), and was
co-organized “From the Hudson River School to
co-curator of "Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone: A
Impressionism: American Art from the
Project for the Nation" (2013) and "The American
Manoogian Collection” (1997), and prepared the
scholarly catalogue that accompanied it.
She has published extensively on the DIA’s
collections, and has published and
lectured widely on a variety of subjects in
American art. Recent publications include
contributions to Calm in the Shadow of
the Palmetto & Magnolia: Southern Art
from the Charleston Renaissance Gallery
(2003), American Paintings in the Detroit
Institute of Arts, vol. III (2005), and Spot:
Southern Works on Paper (2008).
Suzanne Smeaton, independent frame
historian and consultant; Client & Visitor
Services Associate, Michael Rosenfeld
Gallery. Smeaton has been studying
American frames and framing works of
Alson Skinner Clark, In the Lock, Miraflores, ca. 1914, oil on canvas, 38½ x 51¼ in with
original frame designed by Stanford White. Private collection, Princeton, New Jersey.
art for over 30 years. She was formerly
West in Bronze: 1850 – 1925" (2013 – 2014).
Smith is also the vision behind the Institute’s
successful annual symposia and serves as editor
of the Institute’s annual publication Western
Passages. Smith played a central role in the
department’s endowment campaign which was
completed in 2010. He also helped bring the
recent gift of the Henry Roath Collection to the
DAM; the gift was one of the most important in
the Museum’s history and approximately doubled
the importance of the Institute’s holdings.
Jonathan Spies, gallery director, Menconi +
Schoelkopf; received a BA in Philosophy and Art
History from New York University in 2004. In
2005, he joined Zabriskie Gallery, and during five
years under the legendary gallerist Virginia
Zabriskie, Spies learned the ropes, eventually
becoming director. He organized dozens of shows
and art fairs and a number of important sales,
had close relationships with Surrealists Enrico
Donati and Dorothea Tanning, as well as warm
relationships with the estates of artists, from
Ralston Crawford to William Zorach. In 2010,
seeking new horizons, he worked on a
congressional campaign, organizing events,
fundraising, and crafting messaging campaigns.
The art world remained his home, however, and
dusting off dormant painting training, he
enrolled at the Art Students League of New York;
in three years there, he won several “Best in
Show” awards and worked under the
contemporary realist painter Joseph Peller.
Joining Menconi + Schoelkopf (2012), Spies
helped broaden and develop the firm’s marketing
outreach through semiannual catalogues. He
draws upon his years in gallery settings, bringing
a considerable knowledge of American
modernism and a principled position on the
ethics of the art world. His catalogue essays are
informed by his background as a painter which
lends insight into the act of painting. He
organizes the gallery's involvement in three art
fairs – The Salon: Art+Design, The American Art
Fair, and the ADAA Art Show – as well as
overseeing the logistics of the gallery.
Paul Staiti, Alumnae Foundation Professor of Fine
Arts, Mount Holyoke College; he is the author of
books and essays on John Singleton Copley,
Samuel F. B. Morse, William Michael Harnett, and
Winslow Homer. He has lectured at the Louvre
and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has
been awarded fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Humanities three times. His
study of Gilbert Stuart’s presidential portraits,
which was first presented as the Jefferson
Memorial Lecture at the University of Virginia,
was published in Shaping the Body Politic: Art
and Political Formation in Early America (2011).
Jonathan Stuhlman, Senior Curator of American,
Modern, and Contemporary Art, The Mint
Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina. He previously
held curatorial positions at the Norton Museum
of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, the University of
Virginia Art Museum; the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts; and the Art Institute of Chicago. At the
Mint, Stuhlman has organized exhibitions
focusing on the work of Clare Leighton, Sanford
Gifford, Robert Henri, Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy,
Charles Seliger, Gordon Onslow Ford, and imagery
of the Panama Canal by American artists.
Stuhlman received a BA from Bowdoin College,
an MA from the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, and a PhD from the University of
Virginia, where his dissertation focused on the
work of the Surrealist painter Yves Tanguy.
Andrew Thompson, art dealer and scholar,
specializing in late 19th- and early 20th-century
American paintings; after receiving a BA in Fine
Art from Kenyon College, he began his career at
Owen Gallery in New York. While at Owen Gallery,
he curated numerous exhibitions including “The
Eight” (2005), “American Modern” (2001), and
two on the work of Thomas Hart Benton: a
retrospective (2000) and “Benton on the
Vineyard” (2008). Thompson is coauthor of the
forthcoming Thomas Hart Benton catalogue
raisonné with Henry Adams of Case Western
Reserve University and is a member of the
catalogue’s Expert Committee with Adams, Jessie
Benton, Anthony Benton Gude, and Michael
Owen. Thompson has been a private dealer
specializing in American paintings since 2008 and
is owner of Lester–Thompson Fine Art, LLC with
his wife, art dealer Kate Lester Thompson.
James W. Tottis, museum consultant; previously
Director of Collections, Museum of the City of New
York and prior to that, a member of the curatorial
staff in the Department of American Art, DIA for
over 24 years; he has also served as adjunct
professor in the Humanities Department at Wayne
State University. His exhibition, “Life’s Pleasures:
The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure” (2008), was
accompanied by a multi-author catalogue. He was
the organizing curator for “American Beauty:
Paintings and Sculpture from the Detroit Institute
of Arts 1770 – 1920,” a multi-venue exhibition in
Europe and America; and organizing curator for
“Building Detroit: 150 Years of Architecture and
Innovation,” which explored 50 of the city’s most
celebrated and influential structures and their
architects, and that was part of the DIA’s
celebration of Detroit’s tercentenary. His most
recent publications are The Guardian Building:
Cathedral of Finance (2008) and Life’s Pleasures:
The Ashcan Artists' Brush with Leisure. He has
contributed to Collecting American Decorative Arts
1985 – 2005; American Paintings in the Detroit
Institute of Arts, vol. III; and From the Hudson
River School to Impressionism: American Paintings
from the Manoogian Collection.
Friday – sunday, May 15 – 17, 2015
20 th Annual American Art Conference
Expanding Visions of American Art
Insight and Inclusion:
Maynard Dixon, Wide Lands of the Navajo, 1945, oil on canvas, 24 x 38 in. Denver Art Museum:
The Roath Collection, 2013.100.
Initiatives in Art and Culture
333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B
New York, New York 10022
in Art and Culture
Initiatives
Initiatives
in Art and Culture
Insight and Inclusion:
Expanding Visions of American Art
20 th Annual American Art Conference
Friday – sunday, May 15 – 17, 2015
Francis Davis Millet, Study for Thesmophoria, 1897, lunette mural executed for
the Bank of Pittsburgh. Brigham Young University Museum of Art.
Henry A. Ferguson, South American Landscape, ca. 1870 –
1873, oil on canvas. Photo: courtesy Menconi + Schoelkopf.
THE GRADUATE CENTER, THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
John Durand, The Rapalje Children, 1768,
oil on canvas, 50¾ x 40 in. The New-York
Historical Society, gift of Mrs. Eliza J. Watson
in memory of her husband, John Jay Watson,
1946.201.
Charles Sheeler, Ballardvale, 1946, oil on
canvas, 24 x 19 in. Addison Gallery of
American Art, Andover, Massachusetts.